Insect Eggs

In the spring, the 4mm-long cynipid gall wasp, Diplolepis rosae, lays up to 60 eggs (through parthenogenesis) inside the leaf bud of a rose bush. A week later, the eggs hatch and the larvae begin feeding on the leaf bud. This stimulates the abnormal growth of plant tissue, and a Mossy Rose Gall, covered with a dense mass of sticky branched filaments, is formed. The gall provides the larvae with food and shelter through the summer. In late October, when the Mossy Rose Gall is at its most colorful, the larvae stop eating and pass into the prepupal stage, in which they overwinter inside the gall. In February or March, the prepupae undergo a final molt and become pupae. If the pupae aren’t extracted and eaten by a bird during the winter or parasitized by another insect, adult wasps exit the gall in the spring and begin the cycle all over again.

Never let it be said that Naturally Curious readers aren’t creative thinkers (see guesses on yesterday’s post) ! The vertical slits in the cattail leaves were made by female dragonflies that were in the process of laying their eggs. There are many different egg-laying strategies employed by dragonflies. Many females in the group of large, strong-flying dragonflies known as “darners” (such as the pictured Black-tipped Darner, Aeshna tuberculifera) use their lance-like ovipositors (see photo) to insert eggs into plants stems such as cattail, sphagnum moss, rotting wood or wet soil. However, most species of dragonflies possess non-functional ovipositors. The eggs of many of these species are washed off into water during flight as the female dips the tip of her abdomen into the lake, pond, river or stream.

Galls are abnormal plant growths that are caused by a number of agents, including insects. Each gall-making insect has a specific host plant and location (leaf, stem, bud) on which it lays its eggs in the spring, during the growing season. The egg-laying and/or hatching and chewing of the larva causes the plant to react by forming a growth around the insect. Galls of different species of insects vary in their shape and the gall maker can often be identified as a result of this.

Goldenrods are host to about 50 species of gall-making insects, two-thirds of which are midges, or tiny flies. Goldenrod Bunch Galls, also called Rosette Galls, are the result of an egg being laid in the topmost leaf bud of Canada Goldenrod, Solidago canadensis by a midge in the genus Rhopalomyia, often Rhopalomyia solidaginis. The stem of the goldenrod stops growing, but the leaves don’t. The resulting rosette of leaves provides shelter and food for the midge larva, as well as a host of other insects, including other midges. Adult Goldenrod Bunch Gall midges emerge from the galls in the fall, and females lay eggs in the soil. The larvae hatch within one to two weeks and spend the winter underground, emerging in the spring to start the cycle all over again. Interestingly, Rhopalomyia solidaginis lays all male or all female eggs, one or the other.

It’s that time of year again, when grasshoppers are courting, mating and laying eggs that will overwinter and hatch next spring. In addition to adopting different poses and flashing brightly-colored wings, male grasshoppers attract females by producing calling songs. (Some females also produce sounds, but they are usually infrequent and very soft.) The males rub their hind femur against a forewing, or rub a forewing against a hind wing in order to make their calls, a process called stridulation. Tympana, or eardrum-like structures on their abdomen, allow both male and female grasshoppers to hear. Because the songs are species-specific, females can readily identify males of the same species.

After pairing up, the smaller male grasshopper usually mounts the female and the female curls her abdomen up to reach the male’s reproductive organ (aedeagus) from which she receives a package of sperm called a spermatophore. The mating process can take from 45 minutes to more than a day, depending on the species. The small, pointed structures that you see at the tip of the female’s abdomen are her ovipositors, with which she deposits her eggs in the ground.

When an organism dies, such as the pictured American Toad, a series of decomposers appear and break it down. Some of the first insects to arrive at the scene are blowflies, and they lose no time in laying eggs which rapidly hatch into larvae, or maggots. A bit later, carrion beetles move in. Both of these insects live in dead carcasses, where they eat raw flesh and fungi. There is great competition, believe it or not, for rotting bodies, and carrion beetles such as the pictured American Carrion Beetle (Necrophila americana) have managed to find a way to eliminate some of it. They carry tiny mites on their backs which travel from carcass to carcass with the beetles, devouring the eggs of maggots as well as the smallest maggots themselves. In addition, carrion beetles secrete a strong offensive odor that irritates other insects and predators, a second effective way to reduce the number of insects competing for a corpse.

The adult Eastern Tent Caterpillar moth lays her eggs in late spring or early summer on a tree whose leaves its larvae will eat (black cherry and apple trees are favorites). Two to three hundred eggs are deposited in a mass that encircles a thin branch. Within three weeks fully formed caterpillars develop inside the eggs. The caterpillars remain there until the following spring, when they chew their way out of the eggs just as the buds of the host tree are starting to open. As soon as the caterpillars emerge, they construct a silk tent within which they reside, enlarging it as they grow in size.

Paper wasps have annual colonies – only the young, fertilized queens overwinter, with the old queen, female workers and the males all perishing in the fall. The queens seek shelter behind tree bark, or in rotting logs or stumps, and emerge in the spring when temperatures rise and day length is increasing. Last year’s nest is not re-used – the queen mixes wood and plant fiber with her saliva, creating several waterproof paper cells into each of which she lays an egg — the start of her future labor force. Due to the lack of wildflowers (and therefore nectar) this early in the spring, queens rely on the sap from broken tree branches, as well as the sap found in drilled Yellow-bellied Sapsucker wells, for sustenance.